SCOTUS, Abortion Decisions, Ukraine, GOP Humor, Susan Collins, Jan 6

  • Green Eagle detects a parallel between the political strategy that led to the disastrous prohibition era and current thinking in contemporary conservativism.
     
    Green Eagle is reasonably tuning out opinions about the right to make personal abortion decisions, on the reasonable grounds that opinions on both sides are totally predictable.
     
    I dunno. Let’s give it a try.
     
    Analysts keep telling us the prospective Supreme Court decision attacks the 14th Amendment. It doesn’t.
     
    My wife and I met and got married a little more than 20 years ago. If we had married here as teenagers, the marriage would have been annulled and we both would have been put in prison for violating Missouri Criminal Code, Section 563.240, specifically outlawing interracial marriage.
     
    That law was overturned as violating the 9th Amendment, which says rights not mentioned in the Constitution are emphatically protected by the Constitution. The 14th Amendment simply applies that protection to state, as well as federal, laws.
     
    The new leaked decision attacks the 9th Amendment. It says that protection, the protection that allows us to stay married, only applies to rights “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition”.
     
    That means the 9th Amendment no longer means what the 9th Amendment says it means.
     
    That is why conservatives can now attack other rights in addition to abortion decisions, rights that may not have been “deeply rooted” at the time. Like gay rights, same sex marriage, birth control.
     
    And interracial marriage.
     
  • Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group talk on podcast about fallout from the impending, already leaked, SCOTUS decision eliminating abortion rights, and how some lawmakers regard the new SCOTUS ruling as a start, not an end of their campaign to restrict that and other rights.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen suggests that the right to make a personal abortion decision has been abridged for decades. There is a difference between freedom to make an individual decision and freedom to purchase an abortion.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook contrasts the availability of male enhancement pills with the new law on who can make abortion decisions. She reaches an inevitable conclusion.
     
  • In Happiness Between Tails da-AL discusses the about-to-be law moving the right to make abortion decisions from each woman to each state legislature, and reveals a very personal story.
     
  • Andy Borowitz has the details as Senator Susan Collins calls 911 after checking her mail and discovering an anonymous copy of the Constitution. Took her a while to figure out what it was.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz is pro-choice. He mourns for those women who oppose allowing other women to make their own abortion decisions.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit suggests, persuasively, one reason so many Russian generals are killed in Ukraine.

  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson will be forever conservative, but at least he is dissatisfied with a common Republican campaign tactic.

  • I watched my screen in 2016, pretty much stunned, as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tried their hand at humor at the Al Smith Dinner in NY.
     
    Al Smith was the first Catholic nominee of either party as he ran for President in 1928.
     
    Not surprisingly, the audience was mostly Catholic, largely composed of the hierarchy of the Church. Conservative, religious, but trained to be friendly.
     
    They were bit chilly but polite as Hillary began, but they warmed up.
     
    They were warm and friendly as Donald started, but his humor was not humorous.
     
    What he thought would appeal was nothing more than crude insult, crudely delivered.
     
    By the end, they were booing. Booing. Loud.
     
    The Propaganda Professor provides 3 reasons why conservative humor most often bombs. Badly.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged pays attention as former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper relates alarmingly screwy and dangerous schemes he and others devoted themselves to talking Trump away from. But she sees a horror more intense than the malignant idiocy of Mr. Trump.
     
  • The best ranter around, Max’s Dad, is back Yay-y-y-y! with a quick analysis of each contender in the Nebraska Republican primary, and a wonderful description of the eventual winner.
     
    In the unlikely event that I somehow ever meet Max’s Dad and the even more unlikely chance that I tick him off, I only have one request. Give me a quick chance to apologize.
     
  • There’s something you don’t see every day. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has the photo, as Meghan McCain writes a book and cheerfully uses her dad’s headstone as an advertising platform.
     
  • driftglass watches as Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald find a new, unusual, excuse for the Jan 6 insurrection. Didn’t see that one coming.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the polling numbers and knows the issues most important to voters this year.
     
  • President Biden gave an emotional speech this week describing some of the hardships faced by working class Americans, and calling for action to help them. News Corpse watches the reaction by prominent Republicans, one of whom said the compassion revealed that Biden is a sociopath.
     
    Really? Yeah, really.
     
  • In three sentences (I counted) YellowDog Granny joins President Biden in describing accurately the Republican tax plan.
     
  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson begins her high quality daily briefing with the last day on the job for White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
     
    Best line:
     
    Psaki’s tenure has been notable for her ability to parry loaded questions, turning them into opportunities to provide facts and information.
     
  • Tommy Christopher covers a press briefing with Jen Psaki at which the best reporter with the best set of questions turns out to be 6th grader Rory Hu of Nick News.
     
  • Chuck Todd is annoying. At age fifty he appears, at least to someone of my advanced years, like a teenager.
     
    That is something beyond his control.
     
    There is a reason for his sometime lack of follow up questions. His journalism combines with his public persona into an exceptional mix of smug laziness. He comes across as the personification of willful uninformed self-indulgence. A shallow twerp who lucked into something he now believes he justly earned and royally deserves just by having been there.
     
    The Palmer Report waves farewell as Chuck goodbyes himself with one last awful smug, lazy, uninformed, self-indulgent, shallow, twerpy observation.
     
  • Want to know why there is a shortage of baby formula? At The Moderate Voice, Steven Abrams traces it back to the closing of a Michigan factory after bacterial contamination killed babies.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara has a premise that is never to be questioned. Government regulation is desired only by statists and that desire is, in pretty much all circumstances, evil. Since climate danger would violate that premise, it does not exist.
     
    A survey reveals that climate is a great and growing concern among young people around the world. Some experts think anxiety that can contribute to some instances of mental illness.
     
    Since climate damage is a myth (the premise), Michael A. LaFerrara knows what it all means. Young people are being subjected to false climate doom mongering. Warnings about climate are therefore a form of child abuse.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil watches as a conservative Christian Republican nominee running for Congress discovers a new replacement conspiracy. Think it’s silly? That’s what they want you to think.
     
  • In MadMikesAmerica, Michael John Scott argues that libs should stop bitching about billionaires and let them enjoy their wealth.
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research notes that men and women are equally likely to have a sudden heart attack, but women are far less likely to be resuscitated. A university study in Canada finds that one reason women die is the cultural inhibitions of rescuers.
     
  • Nojo provides our anxious nation ways to avoid Elon Musk.
     
  • Cato Institute fellow Julian Sanchez reacts to a reaction. The FBI is said to be investigating Project Veritas, what folks on my side of the ideological spectrum see as a right-wing hit squad, smearing good folk with heavily edited video clips. The investigation is supposedly categorized as a Sensitive Investigative Matter.

  • Hackwhackers finds tweets about pretty much everything. One explains how pro-life folks reflect what you might call a version of a Christian principle.
     
  • Dave Dubya finds that conservative fears about their caricature of Islam has morphed into their own version of what they used to fear.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, an evangelist insists the life of atheist Bruce is akin to suicide by cliff diving.
     
    If that compelling argument can’t convince, what hope can there be for anyone?
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life has found an evil that surpasses pretty much every thing we think is evil. In fact, we devote a large part of life to it.
     
  • Reductress parodies (Yeah, it’s a word – look it up third person present) clickbait with a quiz that will tell you whether your parents are calling you a communist behind your back or maybe you’re not trying hard enough.
     
  • The Strategic Studies Book Club goes to an afterword on strategic failures and success and comes up with 5 strategic lessons.
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac reports on an unusually talented cisgender white male who nearly achieves a major milestone.
     
  • At The Onion, a grieving family is helped through the loss of a grandmother by the knowledge that they really didn’t like her.
     
  • PZ Myers is in awe of the black hole now photographed at the center of our galaxy. He is not so much impressed by the tame and timid press coverage.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 explores what mothers really want for Mother’s Day:
    @whiskeywhistle98 #stitch with @teresa.and.littles Thanks but no thanks…#tiktokmom #fyp #mothersday #kids #babies #mygirls #nope #rest #tired #relaxtion ♬ original sound – @Whiskeywhistle98-

  • Infidel753 declares independence from ideological conditioning. He declines exclusive commitment to left or right. Reasonable.
     
  • I support Black Lives Matter. I don’t see any contradiction with seeing myself as pretty much a support-your-local-police kind of guy. But this is hard to understand:
     
    In Scotties Playtime, Scottie is somewhat perturbed. Seems a 61 year-old woman needed a police report for her insurance company. When she couldn’t get any help at her local police station, she made the mistake of video recording their refusal. Police reacted.
     
    She was hospitalized with injuries that included a broken arm. She was also arrested, charged with criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, among other criminal citations.
     
    After watching a separate video of the attack, thoughtfully provided by Scottie, I wonder if that last charge should have been changed to resisting assault.
     
    All charges against her were dismissed as soon as the incident got to court, in an are-you-freaking-kidding-me hearing.
A few tweets I thought worthy:

And I’m allowed a few of my own:

– Podcasts –
 

4 thoughts on “SCOTUS, Abortion Decisions, Ukraine, GOP Humor, Susan Collins, Jan 6”

  1. I’m a white (well, Italian) guy in an interracial marriage. We’ve been married for 34 years. And when we take a walk together we still get dudes honking their horns and yelling stuff at us from their cars and trucks. In the year 2022!

    A few weeks ago my wife was walking alone and a guy who was standing on a corner made monkey noises at her. She gave him the finger. I have to hand it to him though, because these dudes usually do their comedy from the safety of their moving vehicles.

    1. Thank you for relating your experience.
      I’m of course sorry for what you’re going through.

      We don’t get much harassment, but then we rarely are seen together outside our neighborhood.
      A couple of minor comments at worship service, more insensitive than hostile.

      Someone in a pickup did try to run us off the expressway 22 years ago.
      On the second try, it became apparent it was deliberate.
      After the third try, the pickup exited the highway and was gone.

      Rights that were not recognized throughout our history and traditions are, nonetheless, rights.
      Should we be putting your marriage up for a periodic vote?
      Will the yahoos yelling at you and your wife from the safety of their cars now have a vote on your marriage?

      Should they also have a vote on each woman’s abortion decision?
      Should these guys vote on whether gay people have a right to privacy, or whether a couple will practice birth control?

      Judge Alito’s draft decision seems to say yes, if any of those have not been part of tradition and history.

      1. Thanks for the reply

        This stuff happens in our neighborhood! I guess over the years I’ve been lulled into a sense of… normalcy? … by all the TV commercials and TV shows with mixed couples. But apparently the average man on the street is still weirded out by us.

        When we were first married we realized the American dream of home ownership by driving until we qualified. We lived for decades in an exurb. I convinced myself I didn’t mind the long commute because I enjoyed living “out in the country” but every election season the Republican yard signs would pop up like dandelions. The local Democrats we’d vote for would lose. The exurb was place with no sidewalks and so we were never pedestrians.

        About seven years ago we moved to a nice walkable small city and we love the fact we’re no longer so dependent on our car. But when we take a stroll we invariably get weird harassment from guys in their vehicles. I can never make out what they’re saying but it doesn’t sound friendly.

        I guess the point of my comment is that this country has made some progress, but there’s still some racist craziness out there. It isn’t always as horrific as what happened in Buffalo. Sometimes it’s just little shouts of hatred.

  2. your publicizing important subjects is invaluable — much appreciate your including a link to my blog among them — thank you!

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